Joe Victim: A Thriller

“I know,” the scriptwriter says.

“I know you know,” he says. “But cops really don’t use them.”

“But movie and TV people do, and it’s what people expect to see,” the writer says, and not for the first time either. “People don’t like not seeing things they’re expecting to see. It messes with them.”

“You don’t give people enough credit.”

“Really? You were on the force for what, fifteen years? Twenty? Do you think people really deserve a lot of credit?”

Schroder smiles. He concedes the point. “You’re good to go,” he says.

Schroder stands off to the side of the room and watches the action take place. Hopefully it’ll look better when it’s on TV, because at the moment it just looks like a badly performed play. Thirty minutes into it his cell phone starts to vibrate. He takes it out of his pocket and checks the caller ID. It’s Hutton. The cameras aren’t rolling so he steps outside, not having to worry about sound.

“Something’s happened,” Hutton tells him.

“Yeah?”

“May be related, may not be. But Tristan Walker was found dead about fifteen minutes ago. He was shot twice in the chest in his house.”

Tristan Walker. Husband of Daniela Walker. Daniela Walker, victim of Joe Middleton. Shot twice in the chest just like Derek Rivers. “Shit,” Schroder says.

“Yeah, that sums it up.”

“So the theory is?” Schroder asks, and he’s already working on one of his own.

He can almost hear Hutton shrugging. “We don’t know,” Hutton says. “I mean, this morning we thought it was about a potential bombing, but now we’ve got the husband of one of the Carver’s victims. The same victim that we were never entirely sure that Joe actually killed,” Hutton says.

There were always things about that particular homicide that didn’t fit with Joe’s pattern. Joe has been asked about it, but like all the homicides, he’s sticking with the story of not remembering. It’s a story that won’t work well for him in court. It can’t do. Then he thinks about what the scriptwriter said, about giving people too much credit. Nothing in the legal system is a sure thing. Schroder starts walking to his car.

“We want you to come here,” Hutton says. “If it’s related to the Carver case, you should be here. It was your case. You might see something that’s relevant.”

“I’m already on my way,” he says, and hangs up.





Chapter Thirteen


Exercise hour is mandatory, unless you’ve just been shivved or raped by one or more of the other inmates, which, in general population, is mandatory too. All thirty of us are outside in the rain, with views of wire fences and guard posts that look like small air traffic control towers. There is nowhere to run, except back and forth across the yard, which I guess must be the point of exercise hour. I feel my own humanity the most when I’m around these people. If Schroder came and saw me right now, he’d see it. He’d see I’m just an innocent man.

I walk the perimeter of the yard feeling the rain on my face, letting it soak my clothes, because after exercise hour is shower hour, and our Thursday showers come with a change of jumpsuit. For an hour a day I get to stretch my legs and it’s never long enough, and I never get to stretch them toward any of the nice women this city has to offer. Outside the walls the sounds of machinery fill the air—sparks of metal fly as grinders cut new pieces of steel and hammer drills dig holes into brick, construction taking place as a new wing of the jail is added, more room added for the increasing prison population. Some of the guys start kicking a soccer ball around. Only way football could be any gayer would be if they stripped off their shirts after scoring a goal and group hugged. My dad used to love football. Others are pushing weights, working on stretching the slabs of muscle where tattoos are flexing under the strain.

Melissa visited my mother.

That’s what I keep thinking about as Caleb Cole stares at me from across the yard with the kind of look that tells me he still has a long way to go to warm to my insanity defense. I try not to look at him, but every minute or so I’m curious if he’s still watching me so I glance in his direction, only to find that he is.